Never mind that police spending primarily is a local matter. The bigger questions that Americans have rarely asked, especially following the 9/11 attacks: Do we really want the government to hire new armies of police officers? Do we really want to pay the price for this?

Knowing my views on the growing public-pension crisis, most readers probably think the “price” I’m worried about the nation’s multi-trillion-dollar unfunded pension liabilities driven largely by the “3 percent at 50” pension deals that cost taxpayers millions of dollars for each “first responder” who retires at 50 after 30 years of service.

That’s a huge problem – the result in part of Americans’ irrational embrace of the “more police” logic after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. But that’s not the main source of my concern. My real concern involves our safety and civil liberties given that police officers, and other groups of public employees, have become a protected class that does not have to follow the same rules as the average citizen.